


Trial by Song

by AbsolXGuardian



Series: The Book Lays Open, There are Tales to be Told [4]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast), The Mechanisms (Band)
Genre: Borderline RPF, False Memories, False backstory, Gen, Hellen-style redemption, Loss of Identity, Nikola redemption (see notes), Pronoun Switching, References to canon typical body horror, Season 5 (TMA), Someone is threatened with a gun, Sympathetic Nikola Orsinov, The Mechanisms were Jon's band, The Mechanisms!Jon, The Mechanisms!Jordan Kennedy, lack of purpose, unreality
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-28
Updated: 2020-07-28
Packaged: 2021-03-05 23:55:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,214
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25573957
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AbsolXGuardian/pseuds/AbsolXGuardian
Summary: Nikola Orsinov was destroyed in an explosion, but now, she has returned to a world- the Watcher's world, where not even the Stranger has a place for her. And a part of her that has thus far been silenced begins to make herself known.The world has ended, so why not restart your band and become steampunk bards?
Relationships: Jordan Kennedy & Assorted OCs (the rest of the Mechanisms)
Series: The Book Lays Open, There are Tales to be Told [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1700164
Comments: 6
Kudos: 64





	Trial by Song

**Author's Note:**

> Same disclaimer as every time. The members of the Mechanisms depicted in this fic, excepting Jordan, share the name and play the same character as the real life members of the Mechanism, but are their own characters with original backstories and personalities. Sorry this took longer than normal, I had a lot of trouble plotting this out.
> 
> So what do I mean by Helen-style redemption? Basically Nikola is going to be redeemed by not being entirely Nikola anymore. I just don't want anyone thinking I can make excuses for what she's done, even though I see her as kind of what would have happened to Agnes if she didn't reject her destiny. You'll see, I think I made it work.

"Welcome, we are the Mechanisms!" Gunpowder Joe said, bowing to the audience from the makeshift stage built on top of the pick-up truck flatbed. The rest of the band continued playing the instrumental track of their opening song. "The crew of the starship _Aurora_ , roving through the galaxy. Having fun, violence, adventure, violence, and uh...violence!"

"We've come to your glorious disaster of a planet," Joe continued, "To do research for our next album. So thank you to the giant horrifying eye in the sky for all this." He gestured to the sky, with its always watching Eye, reveling in the boldness pretending to be an immortal gave him. There were a few nervous laughs from the audience.

"But tonight," He turned back to the audience, spread out, sitting on the dead grass, some of them lucky enough to have a blanket under them. "We won't be playing any of our new songs. Instead, we'll play some greatest hits from our older works. And now, allow me a brief moment of self indulgence to introduce to you the crew of our might starship. Well what's left of it anyway. The rest are having their own adventures."

"There's Drumbot Brian, our pilot." Joe gestured to the drum set behind him. Brian raised a stick in acknowledgement of the audience's applause.

"Baron Marius von Raum, ship's doctor." The man playing the mandolin paused to give a short bow. 

"Raphaella la Cognizi, science officer." The woman behind the piano wearing a set of plastic wings smiled.

"And last, but the very opposite of least, myself, Gunpowder Joe- master at arms and interim first mate." 

After that round of applause quieted down, the music picked back up. [" _So mind your manner, Sonny Jim_](https://youtu.be/00UNhIljs5I?t=120) _,_ " Joe sang, " _We've seen beyond the stars. And if you want to prove it, I can show you all the scars! So know the void is screaming mad, no happy ending's out there lad. The book is lying open, there are tales to be told._ "

"So let us begin with one of our older tales," Joe narrated into the vintage-style radio microphone suspended by a wire from a metal bar above their portable stage, their first song over. In what was actually an improvement to how they'd played many gigs, such a microphone was suspended in that fashion where each of the Mechanisms were set up. But if you asked them, they'd have no idea how it worked. The microphones amplified their voices and instruments, but they weren't connected to any speakers. Nor did they seem to require any kind of electricity, just as their truck never needed any petrol.

"[ _Once upon a time, in a far off sector of a very old galaxy- there lived a king. Long ago he was a good king, a wise king, it was even said of him that_ he was merry. But the technology that had extended his life through the millennia had warped his mind, as it had withered his body. And soon his soul grew red- with the lust for conquest.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppmcM_aEMTY)"

Nikola Orsinov leaned back on her hands as the Mechanisms began to play [Old King Cole](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DO8M2WnggXQ), surprised at herself she was actually enjoying the music. Another new sensation she lacked the time to truly consider. 

Why was Nikola here, clothed in a poorly stitched skin, and then covered by a makeshift cloak to hide the visible seams? Why was she listening to music, not leading her own domain? She didn't know, but was almost certain she wasn't meant to still exist.

She had remembered ceasing- because something that was never alive doesn't die- in the explosion at her Unknowing. When the Archivist and his minions had destroyed her greatest achievement, her goal since she had been created. She felt her plastic body turn to ashes.

Then she was in the depths of the glorious Carousel. She pushed aside a panel, and was delighted to see how identities and faces were fought over and traded around her, even if it smacked overmuch of the Hunt. Nikola failed to notice what within her was missing, that rather than feeling the Stranger's will, she just assumed from raw context that whatever this was, it was hers.

So when the Not-Them demanded to know why she was in _their_ domain, Nikola's first reaction was to fight. That was when she noticed what was missing. Since the closest she ever had to a human life was Grimaldi's, she was near to her Entity than most Avatars. She lacked knowledge, of course, but she had _understanding_. And if she was ever somehow inclined to share that understanding, against her nature, it could have been put into words as something like this:

Nikola had always felt a metaphysical tether connecting her to the Stranger, one that she could feel the fear she and her Circus produced flow through, and which burned without it. She wasn't some cultist, bold enough to believe that I Do Not Know You communicated with her, but she could gauge their mood. That was the drive that led her to England (she was mostly sure). And what let her know when they was ready for the Unknowing- although the specifics of the ritual were more her idea than the Stranger's, even if she'd never admit that to her followers. It was that connection that Nikola expected to inform her that this was her Carousel. 

But as she tried to really confirm it, what she found was that the connection was gone. It was missing, like a part of her had been ripped out. She could feel the Eye watching her, leaving her raw and exposed, but that was no kind of replacement connection. It was purely one way. 

Nikola managed to make peace with the Not-Them, and they explained how the Watcher's Archivist had been the first Avatar to succeed in a ritual. And his Watcher's Crown brought about all of the rituals, confined to domains, ruled over by an Avatar. And all of their fear taken by the parasitic Eye as it watched them from the sky. Reconsidering, the Carousel did seem to fit a Not-Them better. 

Shortly after, for time had been done away with, Nikola left the Carousel. She was supposed to receive some kind of domain, but she felt no such pull. There were still humans wandering between the domains, likely escapees or people who best fit into Watcher's design in a position where they could live in anticipation-fear of the domains they passed. Solitary monsters- Nikola had only encountered constructs and a few newly made Hunters- roamed these wastes. Nikola accepted this role, butchering the first person she came across- a young red-headed woman. Nikola skinned her, but without the Circuses' equipment, it was a shoddy job. Seams had to run along the backs of her arms, legs, and down her neck and chest. These were sown with muscle sinews as thread and a shard of bone as a needle.

But there was nothing. As the woman was torn apart by an inhuman mannequin, Nikola felt no fear run through her, to be offered up to the Stranger. With the skin, she'd look like a human from a distance, the details obscured by a cloak she had likewise assembled from discarded fabric. But when a victim got closer, she'd look like a cross between a cloth doll and living bad taxidermy. She took her second victim that way, only attacking when he began to notice something wrong.

Still nothing. So Nikola tried abstention, waiting for the burning hunger of her Entity's demand, just to feel something other than the raw exposed feeling the ever watching Eye inflicted on a being of the unknown.

The other monsters between domains didn't have any advice. The masses of teeth and bone of the Flesh, Hunt, and Stranger that pursued people in the wastes weren't much for conversation, as they lacked minds. And the Hunters were monster-hunting "heroes" who eventually turned their blade against the band of desperate humans that formed around them each time (like Hunters always have). Most were no more knowledgeable about the reality of this new world than the humans they once were.

As Nikola wandered aimlessly, hoping that somehow she'd get in range and finally feel the tug that would lead her to her own domain, she learned how the Watcher's world worked. She found comfort in the unreality humans would experience even in their day to day life- getting hungry or sleepy only as it would benefit the Eye. She watched an entire band of humans in the waste forced to survive under all of the concerns of the old world, for the purpose of them eventually being forced to eat each-other and get picked off by monsters as they slept until none of them remained over the course of the time she had followed them from a distance.

But even as they were consumed by their fellow humans, it turned out, that they didn't actually die. Just as how Nikola's own victims wouldn't have, or, she supposed, she did. She learned that in the Trenches, a Slaughter domain too big to travel around. She tried to avoid domains, to avoid the ire of their rulers. But the soldiers in the Trenches "captured" her as she passed through, and took her to the General- the only person not consumed by the Slaughter's illusory narrative. He had been a general in the old world, the same kind of embarrassingly mundane Avatar the Stranger had- warmongers for the Slaughter and creators of bigots for the Stranger. Nikola silenced her professional pride as the General treated her like a visiting third-party ambassador, likely what the   
soldiers who served them tea, as artillery rained in the background, saw. With pride, he detailed how his domain functioned, the Slaughter had granted him much better tools than the drones and recruiters his government had equipped him with. Those who died didn't stay dead, and returned to their dedicated path- their stories sometime changing at the whim of the General. Nikola asked what if he knew what happened to people who died in the wastes, and he said that sometimes new victims appeared in the Trenches after presumably "dying" in the wastes. A small reward for all of the posturing she had to endure, but Nikola eventually managed to make her excuses and get an escort out of the Trenches.

It was in this second stage of wandering that Nikola began to feel a tug- like the one that brought her to England from Russia so many decades ago. She felt all the elation one lacking a body could.

But instead of her Circus, left leaderless and ready for her as a Ringmaster, this is what she found. The Mechanisms- a traveling show through the wastelands, arranged around a truck dragging around a trailer home and their "stage". They had a few permanent followers, attached to what seemed like the relative safety the Mechanisms provided. But most of the time, their shows were for the other groups they encountered- like this one. With sleep and hunger abandoning them, they could travel for as long as they'd like, and then stop when they found a new audience.

Gunpowder Joe wasn't entirely joking when he said they were writing an album based on the current situation. They'd written new songs, based mostly on stories about domains they'd heard. But Nikola had only heard those performances from far away, from the weird distance that allowed her glimpses of whoever she was watching, but prevented those humans from noticing her.

But unlike the other groups she'd shadowed, that watching was different. Nikola felt a longing- but not the painful desperate need of the Stranger's hunger. This had a fragile melancholy to it. Was it doubt? It _was_ similar to what she felt in the months after she killed her father- and missed him.

Whatever that feeling was, it had driven her to attend this show as the audience.

Now one might think that the Mechanisms' performances were signs of rebellion against the end of the world- a desperate attempt to bring joy, art, and escapism into the world. But that was an illusion, an archanoid deception. Because this world had one core rule, everything existed at the pleasure of the Entities. Heroes fighting against the darkness were Hunters waiting to happen. Escape from domains and surviving in the wastes- just a first act in a story the Fears had planned. Nikola didn't know how it would end, but the Entities were infinite in their power and wholly lacking in mercy, so that could be the only explanation for the band's existence.

* * *

Just as Nikola wasn't didn't know why she had to attend the concert, she likewise didn't know why she found herself taking her skin off and walking "backstage", the area behind the flatbed stage where the Mechanisms were packing away the instruments and taking parts of their costumes off. She still had her cloak on, but anyone who took a close enough look would see clearly that she was made of plastic, not flesh. 

The humans hadn't noticed her yet, when she brought her hands up to her head to pull her hood down. She tried to stop it, to wrench her arms away, to make them obey her will. But she couldn't. It was like how Nikola imagined what it felt like when the Mother of Puppets abandoned subtlety. Except, it also felt like it was coming from within. Likewise when her legs walked Nikola out from the shadows.

The Mechanisms still hadn't noticed her yet. She felt like she had been shoved onto a stage, and than left without a script. The entity that had taken over her body had retreated, and left Nikola with one last instruction ' _speak'_. 

Well, Nikola was a true performer. She knew how to improvise. "That was quiet the show you put on there," she said "very good for some humans in the ruins of their world." 

As soon as the words left her mouth, the man closest to her moved so fast a human would have barely been able to register it. He whipped around from his mandolin case resting on a wooden crate and drew an antique looking gun from his belt. Marius- no he wasn't in character, this was Kofi (How did she know that name?), pointed the gun at Nikola's forehead. His hand was shaking from rage, but it didn't matter from point-black range. " _You_ ," he spat.

This prompted the rest of the Mechanisms to drop whatever they were doing and rush over to their band-mate. They formed a rough semi-circle behind Kofi.

"Kofi, what is this?" Drumbot Brain- no, Ben, asked his friend, as Kofi took a few steps closer to Nikola, leaving the muzzle of the gun inches away from  
Nikola's plastic face.

For her part, Nikola could only stand there, silent and still, as if she was a deserter surrendering to the enemy.

"Couldn't you hear it?" Kofi shot back, still not taking his eyes off the living mannequin. His voice hovered between rage and ecstasy. "This is the thing Jon told us about. The monster that took Jessica. It has her voice. And the audacity to come back here and _gloat_."

"But it hasn't attacked us, wasn't this Nikola some vicious monster and Jon blew it up." Ben offered up, with a softness that wasn't present in his character.

"Yeah because I'm pointing a gun at it," Kofi shot back.

"This might not be the best thing to say," Gunpowder Joe said. Although Nikola had no frame of reference, Jordan actually looked better than he had just before the Apocalypse. Sure he had the worn look of the rest of the Mechanisms, but the hair he had let grow back to it's university length wasn't the ragged mess he had when those nightmares haunted him. Without the dark circles under his eyes, Jordan looked once again like he could step into the role of Gunpowder Joe. "But isn't that a prop gun?"

"Remember that weirdo dressed like a Victorian soldier who attacked us. The one Rachel took out with her ax? This is his sidearm, and I've tested it. It's like our car- infinite shot, although I have to cock the hammer each time." Kofi empathized his point by doing just that with his finger.

"Kofi," Raphella asked. Rachel had already taken her wings off, and she spoke with the calm, messaged voice of a hostage negotiator. "What would shooting her accomplish? We've already seen that people don't die here."

"We only know that about suicides," Kofi snarled back, "There's nothing stopping me blowing its head off."

"The Eye's not letting anyone escape, even if you kill them," Nikola had finally found her voice again, "The Slaughter-mad thing that attacked you? He probably woke up back at the center of the domain you were skirting. And even if this was back in your world, a bullet hole in my head wouldn't stop me."

Kofi, predictably, responded with rage, pushing the gun against Nikola's head, but still hesitating to pull the trigger.

"And even if you could kill me," Nikola said, desperately trying to use her confidence to feel the satisfaction of dragging fear from these humans. But if Kofi was afraid, somehow Nikola wasn't feeling it. "It wouldn't bring your precious Jessica back. The Watcher doesn't have a place for me in its world, you wouldn't be helping anyone. Killing me will not save your world."

In Nikola's periphery, Jordan furrowed his brow for a moment, before shouting out, "Kofi, wait!"

"What?" Kofi snapped back, finally taking his eyes off Nikola. In that moment, Nikola saw how should could use that moment of distraction to disarm Kofi, and shoot him. She didn't know how a should-be-fatal wound from a mundane weapon would effect the Mechanisms, but it would surely leave them incapacitated long enough for her to free, before the Entities repurposed them. But she didn't. It took her moments more to realize why. 

She didn't want to.

"What it said: ' _Killing me will not save your world_ '- you know, like from Jormungandr. What if Jessica is still in there?"

Kofi responded with laughter, half manic and half sarcastic. "You think this thing is still Jessica, just because she quoted a song? A line that isn't even that special? From a character the Toy Soldier didn't even play?"

"No, Kofi, I think Jordan might be right," Rachel spoke up, "We're in a majorly fucked up world and that's a living mannequin. Reality runs on dream logic now, and wouldn't it make sense that by-" she couldn't bring herself to say it out-loud "-that by doing that, you'd absorb some of that person's essence. If we destroy her, we might destroy the little that's left of Jessica."

"Bullshit," Kofi replied, turning back to Nikola. With that desire for vengeance burning through him, he could almost be a Hunter.

"Wait," Brain stepped back in, playing his usual role of sensitive peacemaker (how did Nikola know that?), "What if we test her. We have- Nikola right? We have Nikola play one of the Toy Soldier's songs. Nothing that was on tonight's set list or our last Oxford show's, on an instrument Jessica knew. A larynx isn't a brain. If she knows what to do, then there's some spirit, essence, whatever thing going on."

"Fine," Kofi admitted, holstering his gun. But instead of moving, the entire band tensed up and stared at Nikola.

"What?" Nikola replied, play-acting awkwardness, "If I was going to hurt you, I'd have done it already. Go, get me something to play."

Nikola had no idea why she was so confident. Trying to search her memories now, she couldn't find anything. These were just vocal cords. Nikola only learned the Toy Soldier's real name when the Archivist told her. She had no scraps of memory. She barely had such imprints from Grimaldi, and Nikola had been built around most of his body. Skinwalkers had only the slightest intuition on their disguise's nature. That kind of knowledge was a Not-Them thing.

"Here," Jordan said, offering Nikola a mandolin. For a moment, rage flashed on Kofi's face, that this monster was using his instrument, but Rachel's hand on his should calmed him enough. Nikola took the instrument, and if she had the organic function to do so, would have been full of fear and anxiety. The only instrument she possibly knew how to play was a calliope, and even that would be a stretch. Yet she had possibly staked her existence on her ability to play this guitar-like thing.

But as Nikola held the instrument, it was like something else, inside her, took over. It wasn't like the forceful pulling of before. She could have pushed against it, broken the spell. But she didn't, she surrendered to these almost instincts, and began to play. Her plastic fingers began to pluck the strings, the song chosen by the convergence of two souls.

" _[I'm not a gambling man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5J7G1rdUVE)_ ," Nikola began to sing, sounding both so like and unlike her self, taking on a light and airy voice like. " _I don't know how to play this hand...I was dealt by force._ " She thought of her abandonment by her Entity, because that was what it had to be. " _I thought I could speak easy, but you just bent my words right back on me- then I broke the law._ "

Nikola started on the chorus, perfect for this ruined world and her lost purpose " _Now here beneath the rust, the skytrain rattles round- overhead. The raindrops fall through dust, and shatter on the ground- black and dead. I never should have placed my trust in the City- the vulture town that picked me clean._ "

The rest of the band was mesmerized by Nikola's performance. Wordlessly, Jordan picked up his violin from nearby, and began to accompany her. They fell in together.

" _I'm not a lawless man. I always trusted in your plan._ " As Nikola had, following the script her father had given her. " _I was dumb like that_ ," but of all the various Avatars and cults that had attempted rituals, it was only the Archivist that managed to pull it off. And what did it result in? The realization of all Entities. The Stranger never needed her Circus. " _I chose the straightest path, but all the landmarks moved as I walked past. Now I can't look back._ "

Nikola continued with the chorus, followed with the final stanza- something suitable for Orpheus, but not the fading identity once known as Nikola Orsinov. But she continued, caught in the rapture as the spirits of four beings- both imagined and real- expressed themselves through the music.

* * *

  
  
In the end, what we really are, are the stories we tell ourselves. Stories such as the meaning of the events that occurred before our birth; what is right, good, and just, and how the world works; and the narrative we craft from scattered memories.

As Nikola played, this became the story she told herself:

She had been created by a man, who loved clockwork, because his fiance had just died, so he wanted a Dancer. She was dressed in the ringmaster's uniform of his fiance. The man- her father- taught her how the world worked and why she was created. Unlike others, she didn't have to find her story. An outline had been given to her. All she had to do was follow the script.

Her father died, ripped apart by her own hands, and given a greater purpose. She began to walk, bringing her circus with her. They crossed much land and a short sea. Nikola heard singing coming from a pub. There she met the Angel, a young woman from Oxford College. She had the Angel delivered to her, where she took the young woman's throat for her own.

With her new voice, she fought in the Rebellion. She didn't know it, but she was fighting for Old King Cole. To the Dancer, it was walking the steps it had been given at her creation. It had almost succeeded, but then Cole sent his own Rose Reds against her circus. She was destroyed.

It was found by salvagers, and patched up. Its plastic was mended, but it was missing something. It could no longer be the Dancer. The Dance had been done, without it, and at the demand of King Cole. The King's great Eye bared down on it, driving away the safety the unknown had once provided.

The salvage shop where it awoken didn't need a Dancer. It already had a keeper. So it left, and began to journey in King Cole's land.

There it came upon a group of traveling minstrels. They didn't trust it, but it proved itself.

And so, the Toy Soldier found its purpose.

This story did not make much sense. If one looked at it too closely, it would unravel. Facts contradicting each-other, and contorting into a world that never existed. But personal stories are not written in words and details. They are feelings. The words one can lay them out as can only be reflections of it. And besides, the Toy Soldier was still a being of the Stranger. 

**Author's Note:**

> Next chapter will be Nikola/the Toy Soldier (because yeah, she/it is the Toy Soldier now, Jessica and Nikola split the difference when it came to what identity was dominant) adapting to being a member of the Mechanisms. After that, it will be the end of this series until TMA ends. Then I'll write an epilogue based on the state of things. Who knows what that will be? 
> 
> The reason why Jon thinks that Nikola has been destroyed is that by the time of Revolutions, Nikola has become the Toy Soldier. So he just checks to see if Nikola is still around, and the Eye is like "yeah no Nikola here". Since it doesn't seem like dead Avatars are being brought back to life, the explanation is that because of the precise location and timing of Nikola's destruction, she ended up thrown into the realm of the Fears and came into the material world with the rest of them. The Stranger didn't notice her, and her connection to them has been severed. She slipped between the cracks.
> 
> Another part of the fic that Season 5 progressing has made more unlikely is the presence of humans in between domains. But that's required for the fic, so I tried my best to keep it canon complaint.
> 
> Here's the set list for the concert. The songs were chosen because they were either fitting for the setting or solos for the remaining members. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL6U6AGbmfnpvx2kjaQIHC4Fa_r0H5fRja
> 
> Edit: I couldn't find a way to stretch out my ideas for a second chapter into a plot. So this will actually be the last installment of the fic until the post-series epilogue.


End file.
